SK Hynix Shares Surge After Advanced HBM Chips Production

By Joyce Lee and Hyunjoo Jin

SEOUL (Reuters) – SK Hynix shares jumped more than 9% on Thursday after the South Korean firm started mass production of its most advanced high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, gaining an edge in the race to meet demand from an artificial intelligence (AI) boom.

Shares of the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker outperformed its larger rival Samsung Electronics (KS:005930), whose shares rose 4% due to a bullish outlook for AI demand from Micron (NASDAQ:MU) overnight.

SK Hynix announced it has created the world’s first latest-generation HBM product, known as HBM3E, featuring 12 layers and a 50% increase in capacity compared to the previous eight-layer chips.

As a primary supplier of HBM chips to Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), SK Hynix stated it plans to deliver these new products to unspecified customers by year-end.

The competition to supply HBM chips, essential for processing large datasets in AI technology training and critical for Nvidia’s graphics processing units, is intensifying. Samsung Electronics announced plans in July to supply its own HBM3E 12-high units in the second half of this year. Meanwhile, Micron revealed earlier this month that it was sending production-ready HBM3E 12-high units to key industry partners for qualification.

The benchmark South Korean stock index climbed 1.7%.